BL: Republicans May Gain From Voter Discontent in Midterm Elections, Poll Says
By Kate Andersen Brower
Feb. 10 (Bloomberg) -- More U.S. voters would choose a Republican over a Democratic candidate in their congressional districts if the midterm elections were held today, according to a poll.
The ABC News/Washington Post poll released today found that 48 percent of registered voters would pick a Republican candidate for Congress, while 45 percent said they would vote for a Democratic candidate. Republicans have led Democrats six times in dozens of ABC/Washington Post polls since 1981, according to the pollsters.
Democrats lead Republicans by six points on voter trust, down from a 33-point lead in a survey released Dec. 14, 2008, after President Barack Obama’s election. Forty-three percent said they trust Democrats to handle the country’s major problems, while 37 percent said they trust Republicans.
“The momentum that Democrats had in 2006 and 2008 has reversed; now Republicans have that momentum,” said Charlie Cook, publisher of the independent Cook Political Report. “Democrats went in with a huge wave of support in January last year and have been extremely unsuccessful.”
Obama is urging Democrats and Republicans to work together to end the impasse over U.S. health care. On Feb. 7, he invited lawmakers from the House and Senate in both parties to a Feb. 25 meeting to discuss ways to get an overhaul of the health-care system through Congress.
Losing Faith
Voters are losing faith in the Democratic-controlled Congress. The survey found that 71 percent disapprove of Congress, the highest percentage since 1994, when Republicans won control by sweeping the midterm elections.
The survey showed that 88 percent say the recession isn’t over and 72 percent say they don’t think the economy will begin improving for more than a year, fueling discontent with the Congress and Obama.
Cook said congressional Democrats have been “obsessed with health-care reform,” when the economy should have been their main focus.
“It should have been a ‘Houston we have a problem’ moment when, during the first week of August, we got reports that showed three consecutive months where unemployment was over nine percent,” he said in a telephone interview.
Marist Poll
A Marist Poll released two days ago found more than half of U.S. voters who describe themselves as independents disapprove of the president’s job performance for the first time since he took office in January 2009.
The Marist Institute of Public Opinion survey found that 57 percent of independent voters have a negative view of Obama’s job performance, up from 44 percent in a Dec. 8 survey. Twenty- nine percent of independents approve, down from 41 percent, and 14 percent said they were unsure.
The ABC/Washington Post poll was based on telephone interviews with a random national sampling of 1,004 adults conducted from Feb. 4 to 8. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
To contact the reporter on this story: Kate Andersen Brower in Washington at Kandersen7@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: February 10, 2010 10:34 EST
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